Category: Tech

Sometime back a friend suggested that why do not I write about small technical hacks/problems which I encounter and manage to solve, as part of my website-hosting drill. Whether it is related to WordPress, PlugIns, MySql or general web-server config things, ranging from redirection to .htaccess to what not.

So here’s a small thing which I did. Interestingly it was hard to find the solution, though there is simple configruation which I finally discovered and it works. Hope this is useful. I am also sharing the context here, on why I had to find a way to solve this.

Context

Just like all the other million blogs, we also have an E-mail subscription service at www.ghumakkar.com. We use MailChimp (disclaimer : if you click and sign-up for a paid program I get something in return). It been going well with Mailchimp.

In one of the recent WPBeginner blogpost, they covered all the smart ways to get more leads viz. emails sign-ups. One of the methods was to use a ‘Call to Action’ button at Facebook.

Ghumakkar has a FB page (www.facebook.com/ghumakkar) and we have 85K odd fans/followers. So I thought that I must add this button, allowing readers to quickly sign-up for our once in a week email.

And then I discovered that If I could only find that button. I did a lot of search, read posts but no luck. It was frustrating since everyone said that it is there but it was NOT there on my page.

I infact looked at a solution posted by someone at FB but no, it doesn’t work

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/312169205649942/?ref=u2u

FB and WPBeginner and everyone is asking me to click a button, only if I could find it.

So, if you are like, then read for another couple of minutes and hopefully you would get rewarded with this button on your FB page.

Problem

I want to add a button on my Facebook page. FB tells me to look for a button which says ‘Add a Button’. I looked everywhere but can not find it.

Solution

1. Go to your page and click ‘Settings’. You would see something like this

Facebook Page Settings

2. Click ‘Edit Settings’

Facebook Page Templates

3. And choose ‘Business’ as your new Template.

And Voila, refresh your page a few times or just restart your browser and you would see the shiny, blue, “Add a Button” button.

Add a Button

Hope this was useful. If it worked for you, then please leave a comment. If there are other small issues which I can help solve, do not hesitate to mention.

So Indian E-commerce continues to explode. You would have noticed the news around Flipkart and Myntra wedding (ok, consolidation). The Private Equity (PE) market did see this as a way to show some progress on individual balance sheets since both Tiger and Accel hold significant stake in both companies. But all said, Flipkart continues to do a brisk business, and hopefully some day all the key investors would make a lot of money.

I recently read two surveys and thought that I would present a bulleted list of key highlights and also some cool info graphics.

Source
1. First one is from YourStory.com and Kalaari Capital. YourStory is a news/content side around entrepreneurial stuff, led by Shradha Sharma. ‘Kalaari Capital‘ is a VC firm (160 MN, Bangalore).

2. Second source is from the 2nd edition of Cashkaro Online Shopping Trends.

Time for key highlights.

For most of my work life, I relied on Microsoft Windows and loved it eternally. Right from the days of Win 3.1 where the whole OS would come in a set of eight 3.5 inch floppy disks to Windows for Workgroups, then Win 95, Win ME (anyone remembers it) and so on. My first laptop was a Toshiba (it was the cheapest I could afford and I bought it in MN, USA in 2001) running Win ME or Windows Millennium. For 2 years when I worked at EMC, it was all Sun Solaris and Linux before I again came back to Windows in 2002 when I joined Adobe.

I loved all the short-cuts, how one can do almost everything using a keyboard and what not. I was growing super comfortable with MS and was using MS Win7 when it dawned on me that it is time to get out of comfort zone. In 2010 odd, I decided to give Win a go and moved to a Macbook. To make the transition real, I let go of all Windows machines so there was no way I could fall back on a windows box. It was damn tough in the beginning. Apple was on OS X by then so it was much much better than in past but Windows was still Windows. You could do any thing on Windows. On Mac, you didn’t know the plumbing much so it was very hard to tweak things in registry, difficult to remove program and all their files and what not. Even today there is no option in ‘Control Panel’ equivalent of Mac to do ‘Add/Remove Program’. If you want to remove something then go to ‘Programs’ folder and just delete. It is so simple. Over time, I started loving my Macbook and its been 3 years since then. I am a convert now.

Meanwhile MS came out with Win8 (and recently Win 8.1) and I have zero experience of working on them. I do plan to grab a MS Surface for a couple of months to at least see whats cooking there. I also moved to Apple Phone early this year and with an Apple tab at home, it sort of completes the loop. My wife also uses Apple Macbook and the only hard thing we have is when we have to teach our daughter computer lessons, it is difficult for her to relate to what she saw in her school computer lab.

Enough of Apple talk, the intention behind writing this is to share about the company behind these products and that is ‘Apple Inc’. Over last 5 years they have made this huge transition from another cutting edge company to a cult design company. iPod was successful but iPhone was a riot, to not stop there, iPad almost started a new stream of computing devices. Just like phone, Apple were not the first in Tabs area but after iPad, everyone began to take note of this new form factor and now there are tabs all around. Apple got so much success in its products that it could begin to drive (and decide) the deviations from certain well-established and well-respsected standards. Where it is Micro SIM (iPhone 4) or a Nano SIM (iPhone 5) , lightning port (instead of Ethernet/VGA) or to not give any USB outlet for its devices. MacBooks do not come with DVD drives or an ethernet port. The charging port of new iPhone is different so all the millions of accessories people created (charging docks, radio docks blabla) for iPhone 4 and before now needs an upgrade. Not only this, Apple decided to play hard for its ‘App Store’ and there has been numerous stories on how the certification process is not transparent and blabla. And of course everyone remembers about Flash Player and Apple Devices.

All of the above ensured that their customers get a controlled and high quality experience. No longer I need to blame an App maker for a crash on my iPhone because I know that if it is a bad quality it won’t even get a place in ‘Apple App Store’. Apple raked so much money and the only direction they could now go was to go down.

Unfortunately Steve Jobs, iconic leader of Apple, left in Oct 2011. Apple released the newer iPhone, an iPad-Mini (which Steve publicly never accepted as a right form factor) and the business went on as usual but the trend started to reverse. The acceleration was lower and the earnings (as well as profit) began to slide. For last 3 quarters, the slide continued. They got beaten on the stock market and so on. A lot of people have already begin to see them disappearing over next few years but here comes a surprise. In last quarter, Apple’s numbers sort of moved a bit up.

Apple reprted $37.5B in revenue, $7.5B in net profit representing $8.26 per share. That marks a year-over-year growth of 4.2 percent in revenue and 4.7 percent decline in EPS, with net profit down 8.6 percent year over year

Here’s a brilliant info-graphic I sourced from Techcrunch early today.

When I read about above today, I thought that I would write a short note on my experience with Apple devices. It has been great and I often wonder that I should have moved to Apple sooner.

I am still not a Apple fanatic and I am up for a change when the time comes. My unsolicited advice to you is that you are too comfortable with Windows, then take a good break and move to a iOS device. It would be hard initially and that would do good for your ageing brain cells, challenge yourself and trust me, after the initially pangs are over, you would love the change. I am also now beginning to think of moving to something else. May be a MS Surface ? What do you guys think ?

The other day I found myself in front of a bunch of fresh from the oven college grads looking up to me for some words of wisdom on Software Testing. I have been taking this class , once a year, to young recruits for some years and I am always in a fix on what to teach. I have my own share of tricks in my bag which I use for these classes but I did something new for the current batch.

It all started with a simple question i.e. What is Software Testing and I got a number of good responses but that led to a thought on what would be a first step to engage with software testing and the answer was very obvious, comprehension. Comprehension of the problem, of the object in scrutiny, of the principle which requires validation, of the hypothesis which would undergo various tests and rounds of rigorous observations before its blessed as a theory and so on. Its comprehension, comprehension and more comprehension.

The goal of Software Testing is to be able to certify a software after identifying and resolving all the defects which you encounter during your engagement with the software as a tester. That engagements would be an enriching one only if you know the subject. Its like knowing the intricacies of a specific musical instrument to play it well rather than just knowing how to play a particular kind of instrument. If you would have noticed that for all rock shows, concerts a lot of time goes in tuning the equipments. Even the masters need to tune the instrument before they begin their performance so as a tester , while its utmost important to know about testing methodologies, practices, tools etc, its far more important to know the software in question.Continue reading “Comprehension – First step towards Software Testing”

I first thought of doing a good research to back my title but later abandoned it, since once I prep this story with data and figures, it no longer remain novel. This is just a small observation over last one week when I received two e-mails from Google relted to adsense. I dont remember getting many e-mails over the last 2 years, the time I signed up for an adsense account so it came as a little surprise.

Today I logged in my account and noticed that the home page got some UI tweaks as well. So the e-mails + the changes at the adsense page might add up to the theory that Google is investing time adn effort on this business viz. adsense.